My new t-shirt: Schrodinger’s equation with the solution is the shape of Schrodinger’s cat! Leila has a matching shirt… Thanks Josh (@iamthecarnivore)!
Amazing Physics Video of the Week:
The Physicists Anthem. (really for the particle physicists out there)
This is a great video/song to get what those crazy scientists are up to at CERN.
Also great for karaoke, I just sang it with my daughter. Great bonding time!
xkcd: Complex Conjugate
Shit just got real! Ha!
[Working long days, this is just they type of thing that I love seeing in the morning to get me going!]
Quantum Philosophy and the Long Tail (thoughts from last spring)
(I wrote this after reading The Long Tail, wanted to see if I anyone out there had anythoughts on this stuff too…)
Not too long ago I logged onto Amazon.com and bought a used copy of “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, oh the irony! I am just about done with it and ready to move on to my *free* Kindle version of his new book, “Free” but wanted to put some interesting thoughts I had out into “the wild” in the hopes of some feedback and perhaps some discussion. I think Chris has found one large arena where some of the philosophy of Quantum Mechanics is seeping into mainstream culture. First some background on where this is coming from…
As an undergraduate student I was privileged enough to take a Physics and Philosophy class with Professor Shimon Malin. In this class we discussed the differences between the philosophies of the science of determinism, classical mechanics, and the science of probabilities, quantum mechanics. These discussions have stayed with me through my PhD work at CUNY and have been in the back of my mind since.
It turns out that the 19th and 20th Centuries have been dominated by deterministic thought that leads to statements like: “If X happens then Y will happen” or “This OR that can occur.”
Malin, among others, argues that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift leading us to a new mainstream philosophical framework that leads to statements like “this AND that can occur” or “If X happens then there is some chance that Y happens.”
The classic example of this quantum philosophy is Schrodinger’s Cat in a box (will leave you to read about it, following those links if you are interested). What is important about this example is that the cat in the box is both alive AND dead.
As a society we do not think like this YET of course. If we flip a coin it is heads OR tails (classical), not heads AND tails (quantum). But through my reading of The Long Tail I think there are some aspects of society that are finally tipping to a more of a quantum nature than classical.
On page 68 Anderson says, “Wikipedia, like Google and the collective wisdom of millions of blogs, operates on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics– a matter of likelihood rather than certainty. But our brains aren’t wired to think in terms of statistics and probability.” In this passage Chris points out an interesting facet of the current and forthcoming paradigm shift to probabilistic thought. We as humans might not be truly capable of pure probabilistic thought but our inventions are and they provide us with a user experience that converts what is probabilistic in nature and hard to understand to something our minds can comprehend.
Anderson goes on later in his book on page 182 to say,
“[The] shift from the generic to the specific doesn’t mean the end of the existing power structure… [or] a shift to all amateur, laptop culture. Instead, it’s simply a rebalancing of the equation, an evolution from an ‘Or’ era of hits or niches… to an ‘And’ era… a mix of head and tail, hits and niches, institutions and individuals, professionals and amateurs.”
Chris, you hit it right on the head! People are starting to realize that not just hits are enjoyable entertainment and current web technology is finally allowing us to explore our niches.
Finally, on page 183 Anderson goes on to say, “[We] can now treat culture not as one big blanket, but as the superposition of many interwoven threads each of which is individually addressable and connects different groups of people simultaneously.” Hear that? Culture is a superposition! Not only is all of this language I have highlighted quantum mechanical in nature but I believe it hints at how our culture is starting to enter the age of probabilistic thought.
If I say I am going to meet you for dinner at 7 PM somewhere, I mean I will be there; not that there is a 70% chance I will be there.
Rather, how information is ingested and digested will take on a probabilistic nature, whether it is a conscious or unconscious move on the part of our society.
This is just my first go at linking these topics and am curious what I hear back from people.
Quantum 4ever!
Thoughts?
Too good to pass up. 50-50 Chance I post again today… :)
Warning: Schrodinger will kill you like a cat in a box. Maybe. | Talk Like A Physicist
ahhh complexity!
Having just completed two ”interdisciplinary” grant proposals… this just cracks me up! #Funny one #xkcd !
#Awesome! (Yes, I’m on a video kick, I’ll get off soon)
Awesome. Two favorite things: Electronics & Cupcakes!
Ummm. I need one of these on my door!
Conway's Game of Life Screensaver for Mac OS X
Call me geeky but this is pretty cool!
The speed of light is not constant! I show in a recently submitted paper that the speed of light for a beam of light that curves through space (rather than traveling straight) is not a constant value in free space. That is to say that the speed the light that is traveling is a different value everywhere.
The image above shows another peculiar behavior. The intensity of the beam, called an Airy Beam, is in the background with arrows representing the direction of the velocity of the light waves. Look closely.
My calculations show that the light is moving backwards and to the right even though the beam “should” be moving from the bottom of the figure to the top.
WEIRD!
More to come…
(hope the paper is accepted)
Actually came up w some good physics today!
(photo taken w my droid which is now focusing correctly! yay! click on photo to see how good a mobile phone camera picture can be! 5MP baby!)
Back from sailing, had this XKCD comic waiting for me… very funny! (from my POV at least!)
